Hardcore gamers tend to buy video games
no matter how the economy is. Video games have continued to be robust
despite the economic downturn over the last year as people look for
ways to spend on entertainment that offer more value.

Certainly
one of the biggest games to be released this year will be
Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . The game is widely
expected by analyst to be a huge
money maker for Activision. Some analysts predict that the game
will make up a significant portion of Activision's profits for Q4
2009.

The game officially went on sale at 12
am this morning and many locations reported small lines of
hardcore gamers waiting at the doors of stores to get their hands on
the game. About 10,000 GameStop and Best Buy locations around the
world opened at midnight to sell the game.

One GameStop
location at Union Square in New York City had a line of about 80
mostly young people lined up about two hours before the store
opened.

One person waiting in the line said, "This is the
only game I'm probably going to do this for." The young woman
planned to play the game all night online against a friend.

An
employee at the Union Square GameStop said, "Gamers are
enthusiastic about picking this stuff up at midnight."

Sales
of the game are expected to top 11 to 13 million units by the end of
2009. One San Francisco Best Buy store had about ten people lined up
at 10pm Monday night to buy the game. One man waiting in the line
said, "I'm going to be up all night playing it, until I
crash."

Modern Warfare 2 has a long way to go to beat the
top game from last year -- GTA IV. The game sold 3.6 million units on
its first day and 6 million in its first week totaling more than $500
million in sales.

"Well, there may be a reason why they call them 'Mac' trucks! Windows machines will not be trucks." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer